Covid-19: Over a million students skip admissions in US; kindergarten schools see highest plunge

More than one million children in the United States did not take admission in schools, mostly due to the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, recent data by the government showed.

The steepest drop in admission was reported in kindergarten schools, the New York Times (NYT) reported citing government figures.

The NYT and Stanford University analysed the enrollment data of 70,000 government schools across 33 states. The findings show that 10,000 local public schools lost at least 20 per cent of their kindergartners in 2020. The number of affected schools has increased from 4,000 from 2019 and in 2018, according to the NYT report.

Further exposing the rising disparity between the rich and poor due to the coronavirus pandemic, the data analysis showed that most of the decline in admission has occurred in the areas living below or near the poverty line, according to the NYT report. The average annual income of a family of four in these areas is ₹25 lakh or less. As per the report, there has been a 28 per cent higher decline in such areas than in the rest of the country.

The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has killed 4,293,530 people worldwide. In the US alone, 616,828 people have succumbed to the viral disease, while more than 35 million people have been infected.

The NYT further reported that in the Philadelphia school district, where most students are already from low-income families, elementary education admissions decreased by more than 25 per cent between 2019 and 2020. Besides Philadelphia, Jackson and Honolulu were the top cities with the highest decline in kindergarten admissions

Kindergarten schools are optional in many US states, however, experts say that direct education in kindergarten is beneficial for children as in these schools the conditions affecting the physical and mental development of children like autism are usually detected.

The report also attributed online education as one of the key reasons for the decline in admissions. According to the research paper, there has been a 42 per cent decline in the districts where there was complete online education.

Due to the increase in the infection of the Delta mutation of coronavirus, the concern of the people has increased further, according to the report.